Sponsored Films

Tomorrow’s Drivers (1954)
Sponsor: Chevrolet Division, General Motors Corp. Production Co.: Jam Handy Organization. Narrator: James Stewart. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 16mm print held by the Library of Congress. Running Time: 11 minutes.

Documentary showing a Phoenix, Arizona, elementary school’s driver education program, in which children learn to drive pedal cars in a realistic scale-model city. In this Chevrolet film, shot on location at Garfield Elementary School, school authorities and police officers join forces in monitoring students’ driving behavior and penalizing and rehabilitating poor drivers. This humorous movie proposes driving as a paradigm for citizenship.

Note: Tomorrow’s Drivers was part of Chevrolet’s Direct Selling series. Though filmed in 35mm it was released primarily in 16mm. For more about Phoenix’s innovative approaches to driver safety, see Dan Fowler, “How to Tame Teenagers,” Look 17 (Aug. 25, 1953): 78.

Resources
Ken Smith, Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films, 1945–1970 (New York: Blast Books, 1999), 215.